Inventors are what push us forward as a species - some of them slave for years with dogged determination, and some of them chance upon it by sheer accident - and these inventions fundamentally change the way we live our lives. In this list we tip our hats to the inventors who, for whatever reasons, never made a killing from their inventions. We use all of them to this day and our lives are all the more convenient for it.

Laszlo Biro - Ball-Point Pen

Ball-Point Pen was Biro's invention, but he sold too quick to BIC before he could make any money.

Exasperated with leaky fountain pens, Laszlo Biro invented and patented the ballpoint pen in 1938. But Biro sold it to Marcel Bich shortly after in 1945 whose company BIC pocketed a huge chunk of the cash from the 1090 billion pens that have been sold since.

Douglas Engelbart - Computer Mouse

He invented the computer mouse even before people figured out what to do with it.

Douglas Engelbart's invention was ahead of its time, he invented the computer mouse and patented it in 1968, when he came upon the idea. But the patent expired in 1987 and it was only after that the technology became widely used - since then nearly a billion computer mice have been sold.